


Outbreak

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Multi, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 07:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6228661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako still gives you tentacles.  And how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outbreak

**Author's Note:**

> Holiday cardfic for lemon_badgeress, who requested: _Cloud/Zack/Sephiroth - tentacles._

Someone had moved an ottoman into Sephiroth's office, the single chair that used to sit in front of his desk--The Hotseat, everyone Cloud knew called it--shoved up against the wall as if to say its services would no longer be needed.

The way things had been going lately, that might actually be true.

Though he'd frozen at the door when he caught sight of the new addition, at Sephiroth's brusque gesture, he'd slouched resignedly over, dropping onto the glorified footstool and resisting the urge to squirm into a more comfortable position. He tried staring at his tightly-laced hands, but that wasn't much distraction. He definitely didn't want to stare at Sephiroth, who was scowling at nothing with a phone tucked to his ear, eyes glued to a monitor as his fingers flew over the keyboard. Like everything else in the office, Sephiroth's computer was a sleek, ultramodern affair that looked like it had been congealed in a tube somewhere.

The ottoman was...cushy. Leather, yes, but over-padded, a single piece of decadence in the stark lines of the office.

Cloud was inclined to blame Zack, except that he was pretty sure Human Resources had gotten there first.

"Yes," Sephiroth was saying, impatience and lingering fury lending bite to his tone, though he was infinitely calmer than he'd been a week ago. _Two_ weeks ago, the President and most of the department heads had still been on vacation, refusing to return to Midgar so long as Sephiroth refused to leave it. "Send the paperwork to my office. _No_ exceptions. If he--" Sephiroth paused, jaw clenching at whatever the person on the other end of the line said, eyes going narrow and tight. "I don't _care_ if they're civilians. If they have _these_ ," Sephiroth all but snarled, and Cloud jumped despite himself at the sound of flesh smacking hard on the desktop, his own eyes flinching shut in sympathy, "then I want them for SOLDIER. And _he can't have them."_

He knew there was something he really ought to be paying attention to in all that, beyond the fact that Professor Hojo apparently wasn't done making their lives miserable. It was just....

SOLDIER. Right.

Funny how he'd finally gotten his dream in the midst of an absolute nightmare.

Peeling his eyes open as Sephiroth went silent again, presumably listening, Cloud glanced up to find cool green eyes fixed on him, studying him with a frown gone concerned, only half of Sephiroth's attention still on the tinny voice on the phone. Dropping his eyes quickly, Cloud found himself staring at his own...appendages, the sight so unsettling it completely distracted him from the brand new uniform he was finally authorized to wear. Even if it was just the shirt.

What knotted fitfully together in place of his legs were...unwieldy, just really, stupidly elongated, and there were far too many of them, even laying aside the fact that eight would have been quadruple the suggested amount for anything human to have. And he was going to carefully not think about that part, because he'd already heard every last one of Zack's arguments on relative humanity when it was only Sephiroth who'd needed to hear them. He'd agreed with them then, doubly so when Zack had turned out to need them quoted back to him verbatim, not even a week later. It was just a little more difficult to believe when the...tentacle was on the other...foot.

They weren't totally hideous, it was true. Like Zack's--like Sephiroth's, for that matter--his had remained skin-toned, banded with an elaborate pattern of rust-and-brown rosettes, as easy to identify in a crowd of other tentacles as telling one species of butterfly from the next.

And as that was apparently _exactly what those markings meant...._

Hands clenching white-knuckled, Cloud stared at his own tentacles to keep from staring at the identical set that spilled out to either side of the desk. It was strange to be so relieved that everybody already knew about him and Zack, though it made it a little weird--make that _very_ weird--to be given so many commiserating looks when it turned out that tentacles weren't just a delayed side effect of the SOLDIER-making process; they were also the most embarrassing STD _ever_. Which is how everybody had found out about Sephiroth and Zack. And assumed Zack had been cheating on him.

If they only knew.

"Yes," Sephiroth said shortly, his voice making Cloud jump again after the long silence. "Transfers effective immediately. And Stiegler...." Sephiroth had an incredible voice, one that could kick-start a panicked soldier's courage or reduce a lover to breathless pleading, but when it iced over like that, it was nothing short of terrifying. "If any _patterns_ emerge in our new crop of Thirds, I want to speak with their originators. Immediately."

Cloud's eyes jerked up again at that, but though he found Sephiroth staring at him intently, he felt nothing but an odd sense of relief. He knew fraternization wasn't exactly encouraged, but Shinra liked to pretend it was still a business. So long as you weren't stupid, the powers that be would look the other way, shrug it off as _workplace romance._

If a SOLDIER had made his way through half the cadet class, on the other hand...that wasn't something Sephiroth would ever have let slide.

"Good," Sephiroth said, and on the verge of hanging up, added, "You might want to look in on Hall, by the way. I've heard--"

People in _Rocket Town_ could probably hear the response to _that_. Ducking his head again--and blushing to the tips of his ears--Cloud listened to Sephiroth's gruff snort of amusement and tried to pretend he was otherwise deaf.

"Right. You do that."

And then Sephiroth hung up.

Silence reigned for an endless moment, but just when Sephiroth shifted uncomfortably, on the verge of speaking, the phone shrilled again.

Sephiroth sighed. "Sorry," he said, "I have to take this one--"

"It's okay," Cloud managed, looking up and--right. He could do this. Because he never wanted to see Sephiroth look sorry to see him again. "Whatever you need."

The phone rang again, but this time Cloud didn't jump, not even when something snaked from beneath the desk to catch one of his own coils up in a brief, grateful clasp.

"Heidegger," Sephiroth snarled as he answered the phone, allowing a hint of his new, fierce growl to creep into his tone, deadly as a Nibel wolf's.

Caging a sigh of his own, Cloud's eyes went wandering again, even as he concentrated on not grabbing after the tentacle that turned him reluctantly loose. It was weird how much control they all had over the things already, but that was just part and parcel with how weirdly _comfortable_ the transformations had been in the first place. Dead embarrassing, yes--there was no telling where or when you'd find yourself changing--but in not one single case had it actually hurt. Cloud himself had slept right through his own turning, only realizing he'd gone "Second Gen," as they were calling it now, when Farnham literally fell out of the bunk above his in shock. It was almost like whatever was changing them didn't _want_ them to be scared, only that was a little too creepy to think about in and of itself.

A random twitch drew his attention, and he almost went cross-eyed at just how fast his gaze sharpened on that jerky motion, repeated again as he watched. _Tap, tap, tap,_ steady as the metronome beat of an irritated cat's tail, one of Sephiroth's coils flicking impatiently as his voice grew steadily harder, his veiled threats growing less civil by the word. And that...that could be bad, because they'd all found out _really quick_ that the changes didn't just affect their bodies; there were crazy new instincts to deal with too, and some of them were...about as inhuman as one would expect.

The territorialness. The unexpected pack mentality that made them band together as kin. There was a kind of homing instinct in it too, something that had made SOLDIERs from all over the globe return in a hurry, just in time to go through their own transformations right in the heart of Midgar, as close to Sephiroth as possible.

And Sephiroth had taken one look at them, decided they were _his_ , and started moving heaven and earth to keep them.

_Score one for instinct_ , Zack had said, torn between awe and hilarity as they watched Sephiroth use his new powers of intimidation to batter the entire Science Department into terrified submission. Cloud mostly agreed.

It was just that their awesome new instincts could still be _really fucking embarrassing_ , sometimes.

He didn't even realize he'd snapped until he was already in motion, and though he would have said he wasn't built for pouncing, that was exactly what he did. His hip hit the leg of the desk in passing, and he would have been mortified at the way it skidded loudly across the polished floor--only a few inches before something made it stop--but he had more important things to focus on.

Like the now-madly wriggling tentacle pinned under both his hands.

He knew what contentment felt like. He'd even slowly gotten accustomed to the satisfaction of a job well done, the warm rush of pride in his own abilities. None of that compared to the sheer feral gratification in pinning his prey, larger and stronger and so very much faster, and _he_ had taken it off-guard. Him!

He heard the handset clatter down into its cradle with the ominous sound of cracking plastic, but he didn't care about that. His prey was still twitching.

_Awesome_ , he had time to think, just before tentacles exploded to life all around him.

The desk went careening off towards the forlorn chair, swept aside by a careless dash of heavy coils. Some tiny part of Cloud wanted to quietly yelp in sheer terror, but he skittered out of the way of a dozen grabbing arms without stopping to think, vaulting up onto the couch against the other wall and then flowing over the far arm, circling the corner of the room as Sephiroth lunged for him again. Sephiroth was smiling at least, eyes hot and bright, but Cloud really, really, _really_ didn't want to be pounced in turn. That would just be embarrassing.

He snarled in affront as Sephiroth overwhelmed him with ease, greater mass bearing him to the floor as tentacles both thicker and longer than his wound him up in an effortless knot. Leaning over him with a predatory smirk that was mostly in the lazy gleam of his eyes, Sephiroth huffed a faint chuckle at his outraged struggles. Licking a deliberate stripe up the suddenly-bared line of Cloud's throat, he heaved himself up while Cloud was still breathless, turning away as if he intended to ignore the entire incident.

Cloud was growling around the tentacle he'd caught in retaliation when the door hissed open on six-and-a-half vertical feet of long-suffering tentacle monster, Zack hanging as limp and reproachful as a wet cat where he'd been tucked under one of Titus' arms.

"Huh," Titus said, shaking his head slowly and letting Zack drop without warning to the floor. "So it's instinct, then."

"They wouldn't stop _moving_ ," Zack groaned at Cloud's scandalized glare, untangling himself from Titus' coils--flesh-tones darkening to black at mid-length, banded with jagged streaks of gold. Nothing at all like their own pattern, and gods, it was weird to want to _trill_ over the proof of how they'd marked each other, branded for all the world to see as more-than-kin.

"Uh-huh," Titus rumbled, not quite smiling but clearly not as pissed as he looked. Turning to Sephiroth with a shrug, he added, "Anyway, that's only half of why I'm here. I, uh...I'm going to need leave for the rest of the day," he said, rubbing a hand sheepishly over the back of his neck. "Gerd called, and...well, it's been a pleasure serving with you all, and I'll be sure to give the Valkyries your regards."

"Gerd?" Zack echoed, edging away from Titus in a slow crab-crawl that wasn't ironic at _all_. Even Sephiroth looked subdued.

Only now Cloud remembered why Sephiroth's earlier conversation had been ringing every warning bell he had, because--civilians. And considering how the transformation was passed, not just by mako injection but from... _intimate_ contact with anyone who'd _had_ the injections--

"Aeris!" he yelped, staring in horror at Zack--who, damn him, just looked intrigued.

He barely noticed the sound of the door sliding shut as Titus beat a quick retreat, too busy watching Sephiroth eye his displaced desk as if considering crawling under it as Zack's phone began to ring.


End file.
